


RIP

by Kenjiandco



Series: Cumulative Injury Cycle [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spoilers, Yes I know no one ships it but me, Ymir is best wing-girl, Ymir's got it figured out, and more importantly neither do they, except Ymir, romantic/platonic/one sided I don't even know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 09:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kenjiandco/pseuds/Kenjiandco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CUMULATIVE INJURY CYCLE (medical term):<br/>A condition arising from the repetition of activities which cause mild injuries, usually overlooked as insignificant.  The Cumulative Injury Cycle causes repeating trauma, re-opening old wounds before they can heal.  </p>
<p>If left unchecked, the Cumulative Injury Cycle will eventually become completely debilitating.</p>
<p>(Written after ch. 47 as a sort of theoretical Ch. 48, the aftermath of the 104th catching up with the armored titan again. Obviously, spoilers galore)</p>
            </blockquote>





	RIP

**Author's Note:**

> Update: Welp, since ch. 49 has officially pitched this particular prediction (double points for alliteration?) into AU territory, here's the scenario I'm working from.
> 
> In chapter 47, Reiner and Bertl managed to convince Ymir not to return for Christa, realizing that the Legion would inevitably catch up to them. With the extra time, they managed to make it all the way to the Wall before the Legion got close enough to engage them. Ymir snatched Christa, and Reiner made a last stand at the base of the wall, intending to sacrifice himself as Bertholdt and Ymir escaped over the wall with Eren. Bertl and Ymir got clear, but it didn't go quite as planned for Reiner....

**RIP**

_Memories returned at the strangest times, despite the blinding hot dust and the edge of the Wall cracking away under his heels, the times when there should have been nothing in his mind but the terror of death closing down...he’d feel the hand on his shoulder again, heavy and warm and somehow_ intimate, _speaking of more than a simple attempt at comfort.  The feeling of a void of desperate sadness, knowing the too brief touch could never be enough, and both of them to scared to think of what could_ ever _be enough to heal that kind of wound._

The steam began to dissipate, enough for him to see the silhouettes of the remnants of the 104th, most of them lying flat on the wall, only now daring to move again.  Mikasa had even managed to flip her jacket over her head,  she pulled her dirty scarf off her nose and turned to check on Armin, curled into a fetal ball beside her.  Jean crouched behind the remains of the cannon, one arm locked through the warped, half broken struts and the other around Sasha’s waist, she had been too far away to grab a handhold in time, but he’d somehow managed to catch her despite the dust--

Connie watched it all from the corner of his eyes, just another one of the endless skills a scout had to learn or die, the ones that were never taught, only forced on you by the desperate necessity of staying alive.  He had a different focus now, all his scout’s instincts screaming at him that it was the wrong one, he was being distracted they were wide open everything about this felt like a trap the colossus was gone and they knew too well how fast Berthold could fly you’re asking for a sword to the throat...all putting him in horrible danger and all of them overruled.

Reiner’s knees hit the stone and he caught himself on one arm, his whole body shaking, the long streaks of his still-liquid blood all around him bubbled and hissed where it touched his skin.  He managed to raise his head, and just for the instant their eyes met he looked like a child again, lost and hurt and tortured beyond all endurance, the deep seams across his cheeks sluggishly leaking blood.  

“Don’t move,” Mikasa said, her soft voice cutting through the ringing silence in the wake of the explosion.  She stood beside Connie before he could register her moving,  and the blade in her hand was a fresh one.

“Where’s he gonna go?”  Armin pushed himself up on one arm, the other curled uselessly against his side.  As they all turned to look at him, he just pointed to the shredded remains of Reiner’s 3D gear.   _Only Mikasa,_ Connie thought.  Probably not even Captain Levi could shred a Titan pilot’s harness and barely scratch its wearer.  “The only way he’s getting off the wall is down.”

The words, in his soft highlander accent, went through Connie like a lightning bolt, and his hand went to the handle of the ancient  knife in its makeshift sheath, more a talisman than a weapon.   _And here we are again...no matter how far and hard we try to run, we’ll always come back here in the end, where the only way out is falling..._

He looked down at Reiner (and looking _down_ at Reiner felt so wrong) still on his knees and still shaking,  gasping in pain _they do feel pain, they aren’t really Titans he’s humans and he’s hurt._

“What do we do with him now?” asked Sasha ,a catch in her voice as she helped Jean stand.  

“ _Let me go.”_ The sound took a moment to register as words, it sounded more like stone cracking and Reiner curled over again, coughing.  “Or kill me.”  

He saw Armin and Jean exchange a glance, and knew they were all thinking the same thing.   _His missing fingers aren’t regenerating...there’s not even steam, he can’t stand, he can barely move...if we cut off his head, right now..._

_...we could actually kill the Armored Titan..._

Connie bit his lip ‘til he tasted blood.   _We’d be heroes.  We’d be the most famous soldiers in the history of humanity._

And all we have to do is murder Reiner.

  
  


_The training camp stayed cool longer than the rest of the district, in the path of the snow-cooled air flowing down from the mountains, but the heat had finally arrived to do battle and walking on flat ground still felt like swimming.  The 104th took to avoiding their barracks until the last possible seconds before curfew, staying outside under the trees where at least there was sometimes a breeze._

_Connie had walked back alone, as the late summer night finally closed in, but the sound of splashing from the pump between the barracks pulled him up short; surprising the girls when they were washing was generally considered suicide.  Connie stepped  hesitantly around the corner: the shadow on the ground was too long to be any of the girls...Reiner, he was safe..._

_But for some reason, he still found himself hesitating, on the edge of the honey-colored pool of lamplight.  Reiner stopped pumping, stripped his dirty shirt off...and then his shoulders slumped and he hunched over, leaning heavily on the edge of the trough under the pump.  He looked tired, dark shadows dulling his usually bright eyes...he swiped his hand across his cheeks and shuddered, something dark and sticky  clinging to his fingers.  From his vantage point in the shadows Connie could see the bands of bruising across his shoulders, the hallmark of what Jean and Marco had dubbed “getting Erened,” but this seemed to go deeper than simple training bruises.  This felt more like the hollow, bone deep exhaustion he’d come to associate with ten and twenty year veterans, the ones who’d come out of Zhingashina, or far too many missions beyond the wall...but not with his friends.  And never with_ Reiner...

_“Spying on the pump, huh?  I never figured you were the type.”_

 

_“Dammit would it kill you to make some_ noise _when you walk?” Connie growled, and Ymir grinned her wolfish grin at him from the shadows._

 

_“So who is it?” she drawled, propping an elbow on his head.  “Cause if that’s Krista down there I’m gonna--” Ymir caught sight of Reiner under the guttering lamp, and her grin took on a whole new level of evil delight.  “Now_ that _I would not have guessed.  Well, I mean_ him, _obviously, but you?”_

 

_“Hush ye woman!” Connie smacked her arm away, profoundly grateful for the darkness hiding the blush, which was instantaneous and extremely pink.  “S’not like that...”_

 

_Ymir gave him a long, silent look, and her smile lost its teasing edge.  “You sure about that?”_

_Connie turned to look at Reiner again, suddenly aware that his chest felt too small for his heart...and had for a while.  Reiner shook the water out of his hair and stretched, muscles shifting under his skin, and Connie swallowed hard, cheeks growing hotter._

_“Don’t overthink it,” Ymir said, and then she planted a hand between his shoulderblades and shoved him out into the  lamplight._

_Connie staggered, swearing, into the side of the pump basin.  Reiner blinked at him, eyes wide as Connie got his balance back, and then shrugged._

_“Good timing,” Reiner said, grinning (as his friendly mask snapped back down over his empty eyes.)  “Help me out here.”_

_“Sure um yeah fine er with what?” Connie stuttered, trying desperately to remember what normal social protocol was in this situation._

_“I think I’ve got another splinter I can’t reach.”  Reiner jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  “See if you can get it?”_

_“_ Oh! _Oh, sure. Yeah, no problem.” That sounded normal, right? “Where is it?”_

_“Somewhere down in the general purple area.” It only took Connie a few seconds to find it: a long, jagged sliver driven into the skin in the center of one of the darkest bruises, in the hollow between Reiner’s shoulderblades.  Connie whistled between his teeth._

_“Eren?”_

_“Actually, I’m fairly sure that one was Annie,” Reiner replied, wincing as Connie tried to get a grip on the end of the splinter.  “And a fencepost. Ow.”  Connie rolled his eyes behind the taller boy’s back.  Reiner had yet to give up on getting a rise out of Annie.  Thinking about that was a good thing, it was preventing him from thinking about how soft and warm Reiner’s skin was against his fingertips  (and why should that occur to him_ now, _they’d patched each other up dozens of times over the last two years...)_

_Connie frowned suddenly, as one of the tangled thoughts shifting through his head caused his instincts to spark.  Reiner’s skin was so soft, touching him felt nice, droplets of the frigid well water sliding over his back, his skin was so warm --_

_\--he was_ too _warm--_

_“Holy_ shit! _” Connie blurted as the thought clicked, no_ wonder _everyone always told him he was too slow on the uptake.  “Shit, Reiner, you’re burning up!”  It had taken him a moment to realize, between the cold water and the blistering summer air, but Reiner’s skin felt almost hot enough to scorch his fingers._

_Reiner jerked away from him and spun around, snatching his shirt off the edge of the basin.  “What’re you talking about?” he said, too fast, taking another step back._

_“You’ve got a fever, do you feel ok?”  Connie reached up to press the back of his hand against Reiner’s forehead, which was as burning hot as the rest of him.  “And you look totally wiped out--it was 35 degrees today! Why didn’t you tell anyone you’re sick?”_

_“_ I’m fine!” _Reiner seized Connie’s wrist and shoved him away, hard enough to send him staggering off balance. His back crunched against the edge of the basin, knocking the breath out of him and he doubled over, eyes watering as he struggled to gasp  air back into his lungs._

_“Shit...” the curse came out between Reiner’s teeth as a harsh gasp, and Connie looked up to see him backing away, eyes wide and melted with guilt and pain.  “_ Shit... _I’m-I’m sorry--” he reached out for a second, like he was about to help Connie up, then snatched his hand back, spun on his heel and half-ran back to the trainee barracks._

_“The hell was_ that?” _Connie grumbled to himself, straightening up with a groan.  Something poked his palm, and he realized he was still holding the splinter he’d pulled out of Reiner’s back.  The thing was_ sharp... _Connie held it up to the light.  What the...this wasn’t wood. The smooth surface of the spar felt almost like stone, granite or marble, but what kind of stone splintered like this?  He tried to snap the sharp tip off, and the stuff didn’t even give between his fingers._

_It was twenty minutes past curfew by the time he entered the barracks, via one of the upper windows (a benefit of being a midget.)  Reiner was already curled into a ball on his bunk, asleep or pretending to be.  He didn’t so much as twitch, but out of the corner of his eye Connie caught the quick, panicked look he got from Berthold, and watched him lean down to whisper something in Reiner’s ear.  Connie turned his back to them and flopped onto his bunk.  He rammed the bizarre splinter into the wall above his pillow (it went into the solid wood like it was wet clay) and failed miserably to forget about it for the rest of the night._

_It was gone in the morning._

  


 

Choking silence settled over the standoff on the wall, the same unspoken question sparking between every mind: _what now, what the hell do we do now..._

_“Let me go,”_ Reiner repeated, and his eyes skated to the edge of the wall, only a few feet away.  All his comrades froze, understanding his intention...except for Mikasa, who shifted into fighting stance, her normally serene face black with fury, and raised her blade.  Armin moved before any of them had a chance to react (he’d probably known it was coming) and dove forward to grab her.

“ _We need him alive,”_ he hissed in her ear, the knuckles of his good hand going white where he gripped her bicep.  “ _Think,_ Mikasa, he’s the best chance we have at getting Eren back...”  At his words, Reiner shifted his weight as much as he was able, inching closer to the deadly drop.  Metal rattled all around him as the rest of the 104th drew their blades.

Except for Connie.

“It won’t work,” he said flatly, not bothering to turn his head.  “You can’t threaten to kill someone who doesn’t want to live.”  Without looking down, moving slowly, he flipped the catch holding his gear on, and let the belt and all his blades crash to the stone.  As he took a careful step forward, his fingers brushed across the scarred hilt of his knife from the ruins of the castle, remembering the feeling of muscle tearing against the dull blade, stinking saliva and boiling hot Titan blood washing over his hands.

Eyes burned into his back, he could _feel_ his friends wondering what the hell he was doing, but no-one moved to stop him.  Connie drew the knife from its makeshift sheath, newly sharp blade hissing against the leather, and Reiner bowed his head.  

The knife’s tip clanged against the seamless stone as Connie threw it, and then bounced and clattered to a halt on its side.

“We took you down too easy,” he said softly.  He jerked his head over his shoulder.  “Armin’s prob’ly still trying to spot where the trap’s gonna spring, but there isn’t one, is there?”  He took another careful step, moving like he would with a horse about to bolt, gradually putting his body between Reiner and the long fall to the ground.  “You _wanted_ to go down.  You wanted us to kill you.”  

Reiner stayed where he was, head bowed and shoulders heaving, the fingers of his good hand twitching against the stone.  “ _Oh Connie..._ ” he whispered, cracked voice barely audible even in the silence.  “ _Connie I’m so sorry.”_ And then he dove for the knife inches from his hands.

Connie was moving the second he saw Reiner’s weight shift.   _I may not be strong, I may not be smart, I may not be a magical Titan whateverthefuck--_ cloth and skin alike ripped as he skidded to his knees, the edge of the knife blade sliced through his palm as he slapped it away -- _but there’s no soldier living with faster reflexes than me._ Already slick with blood, the knife flew from Reiner’s grip and spun away, skittering across the stone as Connie locked his fingers around both his wrists. 

_“Connie!”_

_“Stay there!”_ he yelled. “Stay there...he won’t risk taking me with him.”

Reiner wrenched his arms, twisting against his hold and Connie tightened his grip, looking up into his eyes.  “Every damn one of us owes our lives to you, one reason or another.  Hell, we wouldn’t even _be_ us if not for you.  Did you think we’d just _forget_ it all?” Connie’s voice cracked with desperation, his own tears sticking his lashes together.  

_“_ It’s not gonna work...” Jean said softly, only a few feet behind them.  “He’s not gonna let go, he’s too far in denial...”

_Ok, desperate times, desperate measures, all that other shit..._ ” _Deny this,”_ Connie snarled, and he dragged Reiner forward by both wrists and kissed him.

It was hard, and messy, desperate rather than passionate, but after a few moments Reiner let out a long, shaky breath through his nose and sagged against him, not quite returning the kiss but definitely not pulling away.  Connie wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him closer, biting back on the sobs choking his throat.  Reiner’s wrecked hands closed around his waist and he broke away from Connie’s lips to bury his face in his shoulder, shaking head to foot.  Connie tightened his grip and held him as he cried, sensing in the contact between them the desperation and despair neither one of them had been able to put words to.  

He glanced up as a shadow crossed his face, to see Jean edging around them an inch at a time.  He caught Connie’s eyes and wordlessly lifted a hand, one of the sets of manacles most squads carried in their gear dangling from his fingers.  Connie’s heart wrenched in his chest at the thought, but he understood the necessity as Jean continued to ease his way behind Reiner, face white with nerves.   _Stall,_ he mouthed, the implication clear: _if he panics again we all die with him._

“I’m sorry,” Connie whispered.  He pushed Reiner back enough to look into his face, half-human blood steaming on his skin. “You tried to tell me, that night, didn’t you?  That’s why Bertholdt was so scared.  Whether you knew it or not you tried to tell me. The blood under your eyes, the heat,  that splinter... you put a piece of your fucking armor _in my hands_ and I was just too _stupid_ to realize.”  He risked a glance behind him, and Armin nodded his head, just a fraction, his blue eyes glassy.

“Stop _saying_ that!” Reiner’s voice cracked and he twisted away, avoiding Connie’s eyes.  “Why do you keep--I don’t--” he gritted his teeth and spat out “Why won’t _any_ of you _just let me go?”_

_“‘Cause it’s what I_ do!” Connie exploded.  He snatched his old knife up, brandishing the notched blade in front of his face.  Reiner reeled back, and just for a second the shock made his eyes look alive again.  “ _Look_ at us,” Connie snarled, “We’re here again Reiner, we’re  always come back here in the end, ‘cause this is _fucking where we belong_.  This is what we _do,” all I do is get saved by you_ “You’ll always protect me from the Titans” _I’ll have to return the favor someday “_ And I protect you from yourself, and if you take one more step towards that edge _so help me God I will strangle you myself on the way down.”_

Reiner stared at him for a long, silent moment, tears clouding his eyes again, and then -- Connie’s breath stuttered with shock -- he leaned back into his arms, pressing his face into Connie’s shoulder.  “ _Why couldn’t you just hate me too,”_ he whispered into his neck.  Connie bowed his head, resting his cheek on his old friend’s sweaty hair.  Jean knelt beside him, and Reiner didn’t resist as he gently pulled his arms behind his back and chained his wrists together.

“ _Shit,”_ Jean whispered, falling back on his heels, eyes wide.  “Holy _shit,_ Connie, what now--”

“We’ll take it from here.”  Both boys started at the soft voice, and Connie looked up into the very blue eyes of the commander of the Scouting Legion.  Jean scrambled to his feet, but Connie stayed where he was, hands tightening reflexively on Reiner’s shoulders.  Jean shot him a panicked glare and he stood, reluctantly, raising his arms to a half-hearted salute.

Commander Irvin shook his head, running a hand through his unusually messy hair.  “Not today, boys,” he whispered, staring down at their captive kneeling on the stone.  He looked exhausted, deep lines in the corners of his eyes, and for the first time Connie wondered just how long he’d been a soldier.  Irvin sighed, and put a hand on his shoulder.  “Well done,” he said quietly, and shook his head.  “Gods above...”

“Sir?”

  
“I’ve lost a lot of soldiers before today...but I have never seen someone try that hard to die and _fail.”_


End file.
